Last week, a brief history of racism among participants in the Washington Post Magazine Date Lab inspired some spirited defenses of racial preferences in the boudoir—and some polite rejections of the idea that one's blind date is merely acceptable "for an Asian guy." Let's take a look!:

Kim Chi Ha says it's about preference, not ethnicity. (I say it's about preference for ethnicity! But I digress):

I really think it’s a matter of preference and not a matter of ethnicity. You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to. Some people prefer blondes, others prefer brunettes. It’s not discrimination. You can’t help what features you’re attracted to. Some people are attracted to Asians, some are attracted to whites, some are attracted to them all. Just because you have a preference on the basis of someone’s ethnicity, doesn’t make you racist. It’s like having a preference for someone who’s tall versus someone who’s short. If you’re going to prefer an Asian over someone who’s white, it’s probably because of the culmination of looks that tend to occur more among Asians.

Why does everything have to come down to being about racism?

Katie says it's not natural:

you can’t help who you’re attracted to, but you can help making blanket statements about entire races of people that are probably based on stereotypes and subconscious or overt racial discrimination (you being used generally here). We have to at least be willing to consider what informs our attitudes and ideals of what makes a person “attractive.” It’s not just genetics.

Kit-Kat says the daters are doing it wrong:

If it was really just about looks, that might be one thing–we’re attracted to what we’re attracted to. If I have a thing for dark skin, or blond hair, or green eyes, then I’m likely to find myself attracted to people from ethnic or racial groups in which those features are more common.

But (1) not all people in the same ethnic group look the same. There is a *huge* amount of variation in terms of hair color, skin color, facial features, etc. among Caucasians, Hispanics, African-Americans, Indians, Asians, etc., which makes a statement like “I don’t find Indians attractive” just stupid.

And (2) not all of these daters are speaking purely in terms of looks. Some of them are pretty open about their prejudices. Plus, to not even really give someone a chance because of their race is discrimination.

. . . My real objection though, is that it’s stupid dating behavior. Sometimes a good match for you is someone you are not initially head-over-heels for, or who doesn’t match your superficial checklist. Sometimes attraction grows over time, as you get to know someone. Sometimes looks become less important as deeper connections develop. Even if it’s not racist, it’s pretty shallow and self-limiting.

chris sets some ground rules:

Litmus test for whether something you’re saying is racist or not: Would you be willing to say it face-to-face to someone of the race/ethnicity you’re talking about? If not, it’s probably racist. If so, it might still be racist and you might be a colossal asshole. . . . protip: Saying “All x people always/never do y” is not really helping you look not-racist.

upk on the effects of bedroom racism:

. . . some people might be applying the idea that racism is a combination of prejudice and power. Even if they choose not to date a person because of his race, they are not depriving him of something he is legitimately entitled to (sex with them).

Matt is like, does being straight make me sexist? (In other news, commenter Matt is straight, everyone!):

Is it sexism if, as a heterosexual man, I don’t want to date a dude??? Give me a break!

Photo via George Eastman House

As a past date lab participant, I want to vomit every time this beaten to death subject arises. Luckily none of the above mentions my particular article, but I have to chime in. As with any reporting, as I’m sure Ms. Hess knows, the interview process which took about an hour and a half over two days was boiled down to about 45 seconds worth of quotes pieced together to make an ‘interesting’ story.

Most questions are fairly run of the mill to try to get a dialogue going (what did you do before the date? How did you feel about blah blah blah), but a fair number were very specific and in hindsight an attempt to lead the interviewees toward a particular topic. I recall being told that a certain application question answer was used to set us up, and was asked if I was happy with the looks and race of the date since they thought he would be ‘my type’ . . . then the interviewer linked my response to this question to a totally separate one in which she asked me to describe in detail what my date looked like physically ‘because she hadn’t seen photos yet.’

Yes, obviously in retrospect after reading the final product I should have foreseen this, but at the same time it’s kind of ridiculous of readers to take these stories as truth and divine prejudice/racism/whatever. Maybe, City Paper, if this is newsworthy, you should create a better date lab type column? Or highlight something actually new and different for a change?

Interesting. Any eager applicants for the Washington City Paper's Race Lab?

So how many local Date Lab daters discriminate based on skin color? Plenty! A brief history:

A lot of daters set up by the Washington Post just don't want to date white people. Set up last March, professor Steven Kelts requested anyone but a white lady: He asked for "An Asian, Indian, Latino or black woman who is educated, likes to talk about ideas and wants to travel the world with me!" Another dater told Date Lab, “I tend to like girls that show signs of being foreign-born or maybe have something ethnically awesome about their looks.” Sadly, the Post matched him with a woman with a “Midwestern” appearance.

Other daters are looking to date exclusively white. In 2009, Patrick Chang stated a preference for “Tall, Caucasian women." Unfortunately, his date told the magazine this: “I tend not to find Asians attractive." When she met Chang, "With a name like Patrick I was kind of expecting an Irish guy," she admitted. "I tried to be as open-minded as possible." The pair declined to pursue a second date.

Chang's date isn't the only one to nix the entire continent: In one 2008 date, both Asian daters didn't date Asians. "I thought he was attractive and well put together, but you always have to end it with 'for an Asian guy,'" Stephanie Villaflor told the Post. "I don't usually date Asian guys." Her date, Christopher Dum, admitted: "I've only really dated white girls." Daters are generally open about their intra-racial racism: In 2006, a half-Filipino, half-Indian guy revealed a prejudice against Indian women—he finds them “a little snobby.”

Most racial preferences are aired out of disappointment—when the date who arrives is a little too white or a little too Indian. But sometimes, racial preference makes a match. Son Vang told the paper his date has "gotta be Asian, preferably Vietnamese." When Caroline T. Nguyen arrived, "I wasn't sure if my date was going to be Asian, so I was pleasantly surprised when she was," he said. Later, Vang told the paper: "At first we were trying to figure out why The Post set us up. We thought it might be the Asian thing." They hit it off.

Dater prejudice isn't limited to race, of course. After being set up with a man who uses a wheelchair, one dater reported being “really mad” at Date Lab for refraining from disclosing her date's disability prior to the meeting. “I felt like I was set up . . . I'd look like a jerk, and he'd just be ‘the handicapped guy,’" she told Date Lab. "I also didn't think it was fair to him—what if I had turned out to be a mean, tactless person?” What if.

For the record: Date Lab's gays daters can be prejudiced, too. “He's attractive, but [he has] this whole aura [of] your basic white guy,” Bob Baden said of his 2008 same-sex date. “I go for a more ethnic or foreign look.”

On Aug. 1, The Washington Post Magazine’s weekly blind date feature, Date Lab, will print what has become a once-yearly ritual: The gay date.

Every Sunday, the magazine writes up the adventures of two single Washingtonians set up by the Post; after the date, both spill the night’s details to a reporter, judging their companions on everything from body weight to tolerance for “that’s what she said” jokes. Since launching in 2006, Date Lab has run nearly 200 heterosexual encounters. But it’s only managed to set up four same-sex couples in as many years—and one dater was a repeat.

The Aug. 1 item will be a milestone for Date Lab editor Amanda McGrath—her first same-sex write-up since assuming the feature in May 2009. “I heard stories from the previous editor about how difficult it was, and I thought, ‘This won’t be a problem for me. It will be so easy,” says McGrath. Nope: Date Lab’s last gay date hit newsstands on Jan. 20, 2008. It ended with “a little bit of an air hug.”

According to a recent survey, nearly 7 percent of D.C. residents identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Which you’d think would mean The Post wouldn’t go two years between gay dates. Apparently, in order to qualify as a same-sex match on Date Lab, being gay isn’t enough. Asked in an online chat in 2006 why Date Lab mostly experimented with straight romance, then-editor Sandy M. Fernandez said it was a matter of math: “We just need to get in enough applicants that it isn’t one of those soap opera dates, where if you see two gay or Latino or African American characters, they’re inevitably going to hook up.” Four years later, the feature’s applicants remain prohibitively hetero—and, according to The Post, that’s why the people who make it into print do, too.

“We honestly try with every couple we send out to make a good match, to find a pair that will hit it off,” says McGrath, 27. But “it’s really hard to find people who seem compatible when you have such a limited pool to work with.”
Obviously, in the grand scheme of injustices, the paucity of gay Date Labbers ranks pretty low. But the lack of diversity—in a feature that so clearly strives for it in other ways—does stand out. After all, plenty of heterosexual couples have been matched based on glancing similarities: “She roasts; he bakes”; “He paints, she pots”; “He’s tall; she’s tall”; “She’s tall; he’s very tall.” The paper has matched three pairs based on a shared interest in distance running (“Have these two marathoners run into romance?”; “Two runners finally cross paths. Can they go the distance?”; “Can two marathoners go the distance?”). Some daters don’t even have that much in common. Past unifying principles include “They Were Adopted And Keep Losing Debit Cards. Will They Hang Onto Each Other?” and “They Both Agree: She’s ‘Not Hideous.’” In 2008, a monkey from Rockville tried its hand at making a match. Both daters rated the date a “5.”

So with a track record like that, why not “He’s gay; he’s gay”?

The Post’s answer: Date Lab’s shallow same-sex pool. Of the 3,300 potential daters who have submitted applications since 2007, only 84 identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Fifty-one are men; 33 are women. Since Date Lab keeps potential lovebirds on file for years, some once-promising applicants wind up in committed relationships or rethink their interest in romantic exhibitionism—particularly if they’re not out to all their friends and family who may happen to pick up the Post. From there, start factoring in age (daters range from their 20s to their 60s), interests, personality, and appearance, and you’ve got a pretty skimpy selection of gay and lesbian Washingtonians.

allegiance to the United States, foreign influence, foreign preference, sexual behavior, personal conduct, alcohol consumption, drug involvement, psychological conditions, criminal conduct, handling protected information, outside activities and use of information technology systems.

Well, "outside activities" seems to cover just about everything, but the "sexual behavior" point could stand some elaboration. Are we talking workplace sexual harassment? Rape? Sex outside marriage? Anal? No matter—this federal agency apparently reserves the right to fire you for fucking wrong. Whatever that means. [Via GLAA Forum]

* Happy birthday, "post-racial America"! Writing in the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker does not see race. In response to criticism that calling Barack Obama the first woman president was (among other things) racist, Parker pens a column explaining that she can't write racist things, because she is white, and white people have the luxury of not being racist, like black people are:

But I also recognize that my life experience is different from that of most African Americans. And that experience allows me both the luxury of seeing people without the lens of race, but also (sometimes) to fail to imagine how people of other backgrounds might interpret my words.

She also has trouble seeing Obama as "exclusively black" because she has learned that she and the President are eighth cousins once removed—a genealogical "nugget" she had previously intended to write an entire column about.  That detail alone strikes me as a fireable offense.

* Via Figleaf: Holly at The Pervocracy on the douchebaggery behind calling women "females":

I hate it when people call women "females." I have one friend who does it because she was in the military and it was standard practice there, and occasionally I'll say it when I specifically mean biological females rather than women, but 98% of the time it's douchebaggery. Rule of thumb: if you say "females and males" it's okay, but if you say "females and guys/men," you're probably a douchebag.

* Virginia resident Andrea examines U.S. immigration laws through the lens of her attempts to get her British fiancee a visa. In short, they have it easy, and they still don't have it easy:

One of the things I hear a lot in any discussion of people who come here illegally is some permutation of “Well why don’t they just do it legally?” If they know that I’m currently going through the immigration process with my fiance, people will often ask “Doesn’t it make you mad that you’re going to all this trouble and people are just coming over here illegally?” The answers to these questions are, in reverse order, “No, I am thankful that we are able to do it legally fairly easily” and “Wow, you have never dealt with immigration, have you?”

* In Newsweek, Julia Baird tells us to "stop ogling Republican women":

It’s odd to see how some men insist that when women start to grasp power, we should think of them primarily as playthings and provocateurs. Is this the best way to explain their success? They aren’t challenging the status quo. They’re being wild! They’re not trying to lift the ban on offshore drilling. They’re being naughty! When four women beat a field of men on the same night recently, competing for primary and gubernatorial nominations, it was widely referred to as “ladies’ night.” Aren’t ladies’ nights those promotions where women are allowed free entry into bars to provide fodder for the men?

* Scarleteen continues its "queering sexuality in color" series, this time with Dharshi, a 25-year-old South Asian lesbian:

The problem is that the queer community where I live is predominantly white, and tend not have familiarity with issues such as my marriage predicament. Sometimes I do feel pressure from the queer community to come out, as if that will be the solution to all of my problems. I do have some wonderful white gay and lesbian friends though who make an effort to listen and understand. One woman in particular is my mother's age and her advice and sharing of her life experience has really helped me through the hard times. Also when I watch her with her partner and her kids, I feel optimistic that maybe that kind of future is also possible for me. I love meeting other queer people of colour, particularly from the South Asian community, but I don't often get this opportunity.

Photo via Beverley & Pack, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Think of it this way: We all agree that pickpocketing constitutes "theft." A pickpocket doesn't get to come along and argue: "No, what I did isn't theft, it's merely pickpocketing, and therefore it isn't illegal." Any newspaper that played along with a pickpocket's demand to stop using the word "theft" would be taking the pickpocket's side, not occupying any middle ground. There is no middle ground here.

Remember that the next time the media calls intimate partner violence and sexual assault by any-other-name. When a publication calls rape "sex," it is not reserving judgment before trial. When it describes an accused assailant as "a loose cannon" and a "bad boy," it is not adding color. When it characterizes self-defense after sexual assault as a "bar fight," it is not being fair. It's taking sides.

* D.C. Mayoral candidate Leo Alexander only has 700 bucks in the war chest, and $200 of it came from Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. That's rough, dude.

* Woman marries her partner in D.C., but is denied a name change in her home of Tennessee, on account of her absurd document from the nation's capital claiming her to be married—to a woman!

* The Bilerico Project takes the temperature of gay online media. Zack Rosen of the New Gay submits: "The state of gay online media is, simply, that it exists."

* In the Washington Post, Mark Judge calls for more male teachers in Catholic schools, for feminism:

[T]his is the kind of feminism that can sometimes be best delivered by a man. This year girls basketball team at St. Mary's won the league championship. As a reward the girls on the team got to come to school out of uniform, wearing whatever ever t-shirts they wanted to. The boys, whose team had not done as well, were sulking around school, bristling whenever the girls would brag. I noticed they were whispering to each other, "Yeah, but girls basketball is not a sport." They would never say in front of any teachers, 90 percent of whom are women. But then the sixth grade came into my classroom in the afternoon and, the boys saw me standing in the front and they let themselves go. "It's not a sport!" they cried. They called out, men to man, for validation—"Mr. Judge, girls basketball is not a sport! Right?"

I was surprised. I grew up in the 1970s, and even in those dark ages we would never have claimed that women's basketball was not a sport. Had thing moved that far backwards? Actually, I answered, not only is it a sport, it's a lot more interesting than men's basketball. Men's basketball has become a lot of dunking. In women's basketball there is strategy, jump-shots, thinking.

The boys looked at me suspiciously for a few seconds. But then they seemed to take it in.

* So sorry to bother you, via Feministe: How men and women pitch stories to the Awl. According to the site: "The emails from men are pretty direct. The emails from women are often kind of . . . apologetic!"

Photo via Nationaal Archief

Last night, I re-read Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize-winning feature on parents who accidentally forget their infants in the backseats of their cars, leaving them to swelter to death in the heat. And since I can make connections to rape culture out of practically anything, I was struck by this section in Weingarten's story, about the public's reaction to parents who make this fatal mistake:

"This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence."

"I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn't really want a kid."

"He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are."

These were readers' online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison's son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. "We are vulnerable, but we don't want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters."

Sound familiar? The comparison to victims of rape doesn't end there. One mother whose baby died after she forgot him in the backseat of her car was—strangely—explicitly slut-shamed by an online commenter:

After Lyn Balfour's acquittal, this comment appeared on the Charlottesville News Web site:

"If she had too many things on her mind then she should have kept her legs closed and not had any kids. They should lock her in a car during a hot day and see what happens."

The idea of addressing parents who accidentally kill their children by putting them "in a different category" functions a bit differently when applied to the victims and perpetrators of rape. When we are confronted with victims of rape, we put them in a different category ("irresponsible sluts") in order to avoid believing that rape could ever happen to us; when we are confronted with rapists, we put them in a different category ("evil monsters") in order to avoid believing that our classmates, friends, brothers, and sons are actually capable of such a heinous crime. Parents who accidentally kill their children are both victims and perpetrators—they're our evil monsters and irresponsible sluts all wrapped into one.

Photo via spaceodissey, Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0

Last month, the Reliable Source unveiled its NCAA-style "Gossip Tournament." Making the final 32 was Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia, who was a gossip force to be reckoned with in 2010. Reports surfaced early this year that several MPP staffers had quit over Kampia's sexually inappropriate behavior and comments, including taking a subordinate to his home after a work happy hour, inspiring her resignation; instructing his scheduler to make an appointment for himself and "bone-girl"; repeatedly informing a subordinate of his intentions to perform "a breast massage" on another woman; and allegedly telling a subordinate that she would look "hotter with a boob job."

For this, Kampia has qualified in the tournament's "HOT STUFF" category, where he faced off with Peter Orszag in what the Reliable Source called "The Player's Playoff." Let's see: On the one hand, we've got a politico-about-town who had a child out of wedlock; on the other, a guy accused of driving out large portion of his staff over charges of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Hmm . . . Hot or not?

Last week on the Sexist, readers sounded off on the new Kotex ad that isn't allowed to utter the sound "vuh-jahy-nuh," we parsed the difference between the "vulva" and the "vagina," and one commenter received some Very Special terminology instruction on the meaning of "tampon." Let's do this point-counterpoint style, shall we?

POINT: Censoring the word "vagina" is an absurd and sexist practice. Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten on the Post's history of not saying "vagina" in print:

On this subject, I’d like to reprise a Comment I once made in this very forum a few months ago:

Meanwhile, I’d like to share a story apropos of the argument about whether women “are” their body parts. Back in the 1990s I was editing a story by Laura Blumenfeld about the then-trendy topic of the female condom. When we were done with it, the story had to be approved by a top editor at the paper, because it was about sex, and The Post was very, very nervous about sex. The editor liked the story, but he asked us to take out the word “vagina,” which he found distasteful. (Er, he found the WORD distasteful.)

Laura and I argued strenuously that you cannot write a story about the female condom without indicating how it is used, and that it is absolutely impossible to explain this without using the v word. And that there is nothing wrong with the v word.

The editor got all huffy and declared that he would rewrite it himself, which he did. And so there appeared the following line in The Washington Post; it is still in the archives: “The female condom lines the inside of a woman.”

Voila! In trying to be tasteful and sensitive, this editor put into the Washington Post a line SPECIFICALLY equating a woman with her ladypart.

COUNTERPOINT: Censoring the word "vagina" is an absurd and sexist practice . . . inflicted against men by those danged feminist groups! Also, forget "vagina!" Why can't I say "pussy"? Jeff lays it all down for us:

Did you ever think that women will complain if the word vagina is used and the networks don’t want letters and calls from thousands of women. It’s why words for male genitals are used routinely throughout every show on TV, but you will never hear a slang word for female genitalia. I have heard balls, nuts, dick, pecker, prick, dickhead, and even cock during prime-time on all channels. Why can’t tits or pussy be used? It’s because of the backlash from women’s groups and many women in general.

Could you imagine how many letters and calls NBC would receive if the show Parks and Recreation used the word pussy. But I heard the word dick and balls during the last episode. It’s ok for mainstream media to be sexist and bash men, use words for male genitalia, portray men as bumbling idiots, but not women.

It’s even ok to show men nude in basic cable shows, but never women. Movies and cable shows even have started showing penises regularly, but a vagina is forbidden. It’s given an NC-17 if they try to show it. Only pubic hair or a boob is allowed because women think showing a vagina degrades them. Even the show Spartacus shows penises every episode, but they won’t show a vulva so they make the women wear merkins to cover them up.

So in the end, blame women and women’s groups for acting like a vagina is so vulgar.

Does "A Vagina Is Forbidden" sound like a catchphrase used to sell diamonds to anyone else? And speaking of the difference between the vagina and the vulva, I, too, am interested in basic cable showing more of the internal canal leading to a woman's uterus. Also, why aren't these ancient Roman women depicted with totally bald genitalia? Sexism!

. . . But allow me to ignore the cries of my soon-to-be decrepit ladyparts for a moment in order to re-write this headline to reflect a few possibilities that reporter Carolyn Butler omits from the accompanying story. But first: What's with these ovaries anyway, and why are they so darned stubborn?

Butler's story is a tale of modern career woman v. nature. In it, women who are busy pursuing their professional dreams in their 20's may be dangerously ignoring the silent extermination occurring within their own bodies—according to Butler, "women lose 90 percent of their eggs by age 30"—until it's too late. But don't "start freaking out," Butler tells her readers, who, being women and all, are almost certainly doing just that.

Onto the science: "Society has changed," fertility doctor Robert Stillman of Rockville's Shady Grove Fertility tells Butler, "but the ovaries will take another million years or two to catch up to that."

Stillman's evolutionary perspective prompts this strange analysis from Butler:

Since we don't have another million years to wait, many women thinking of having children are left with the predicament of balancing the personal, primal urge to partner up and procreate with worthwhile social goals such as pursuing higher education and a successful career—not to mention economic stability.

As someone whose personal, primal urges have always been telling her to learn stuff and use her brain for stuff, not to make babies, I am left confused by the idea that my impulse to start a career is seen exclusively as a "worthwhile social goal" that is somehow at odds with my "personal" interests. But then again, there's a lot I don't identify with here. Possible alternate headlines for this story that I would be more likely to get down with:

Adoption agencies have adjusted to many women's decision to delay having children. [Seriously, Butler does even mention this possibility].

* Robert Stillman of Rockville's Shady Grove Fertility has adjusted to raking in tons of cash from many women's decision to delay having children.

* Ovaries indifferent to what you do with eggs after they pass off responsibility to fallopian tubes, uterus

* Ovaries privately concerned that women will end this whole society v. nature charade by just delaying having children until death

* Ovaries confused as to why the decision to have children is presented exclusively as a concern of women in this article

* Ovaries going through particularly rough time right now, could use a couple million years to adjust

Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can
Seldom found in woman, never found in man.

We often hear that "patience is a virtue." It's the second half of the sentiment largely goes unspoken: Patience is a virtue for women. What is patience, exactly? In Helper By Design, Elyse Fitzpatrick's guide to submitting to your man in the name of God, patience is defined as the "power to endure without complaint something which is disagreeable." That's right, ladies—our gender is number one in leading lives of quiet desperation.

Throughout history, this "power to endure" has proven . . . inconvenient. While patience has its perks in dealing with events that lie entirely outside of our control—war, famine, terminal illness—it becomes a bit of a bother when applied to the realm of romantic relationships. Wait to be asked on a date. Wait to be swept off your feet. Wait for sex—if not until marriage, then at least 90 days. Wait for him to bend down on one knee. Once hitched, wait on him. Then, die.

Why are women encouraged to wait around for major life events to just happen to us? Patience, my dear. These relationship milestones have been engineered and reinforced along traditional gender lines in order to test a woman's ability to shut up and sit pretty, while encouraging men of action to make all the decisions around here. But unfortunately for the patience lobby, us women have figured a few things out over the history of time. One: Our vaginas won't implode upon completion of premarital sex. Two: Our significant others can still love us without investing two paychecks worth of bling into one of our virtuous little fingers. And three: Waiting does not work. Ever.

In light of these developments, some have chosen to trash those pesky romantic milestones altogether, refusing to see virginity and weddings as indicators of our worth as women. Others have flipped the gender script they're based upon: Ask out. Initiate sex. Propose. But some just can't let go of the passivity thing, and they're going to try their hardest to make feminine patience work in the 21st century. For them, the ideal of passive patience needn't be discarded; it's just got to be re-coded and re-sold as proactive patience. Nowadays, getting men to come to you doesn't have to be a pathetic waste of time—it can be a subversive, brave, and even—yes—feminist act of empowerment!

Coincidentally, all of these people appear to be concentrated in our nation's record labels, movie studios, publishing houses, and newspapers. Behold, pop culture's vision of a feminism of patience: No need to abandon traditional marriage—just celebrate women who are strong enough to get what they want (that ring). Don't propose to your significant other—just subversively coerce him into doing it for you. Don't bother waiting around in your ivory tower for your prince to come—just make damned sure you're on the receiving end of that fairy-tale ending. Girl power!

—

Exhibit A: The works of Taylor Swift.

[youtube:v=2CZQZohbZcQ]

Hoo boy, how are we going to reconcile this one, ladies? Taylor Swift sings songs about waiting around, being a princess, and crying for her "Romeo" to rescue her from her dad, who is so mean. Then, she makes videos for these songs where she is literally waiting in an ivory tower for her prince to come:

Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting all there's left to do is run
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story baby just say yes

Okay. Breathe. Despite the traditional trappings—Romeo, waiting, prince, princess—it's not hard to find a girl-power lining in this song. Swift is coaching Romeo here. She's giving him exact instructions on where to find her. She's charting out their escape route. And she's imploring him to say yes to her demands. That is, until we get to the fairy-tale ending:

Romeo save me I've been feeling so alone
I keep waiting for you but you never come
Is this in my head? I don't know what to think
He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring

And said, marry me Juliet
You'll never have to be alone
I love you and that's all I really know
I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress
It's a love story baby just say yes

Ooh! So close! Notice how Swift whiles away her time waiting, crying, wishing, hoping, praying, etc. while all Romeo has to do is . . . go over and talk to her dad. It's not exactly rocket science, folks. And yet, Swift expends a whole lot of emotional energy in order to goad the love of her life into performing the most basic of tasks, instead of just, like, dealing with her father herself, or realizing that her father is a dick and she's 18 so he can't tell her what to do anyway. But whatever—surely we can channel all of Swift's emotional energy into some sort of feminist reading of her work? Alyssa Rosenberg, noted critic of passivity in popular culture, sees Swift as feminist, in a way:

I am an enormous sucker for . . . Taylor Swift's "Love Story," which is an absurdly mature and lovely piece of pop songwriting. "I was a scarlet letter" spoken as a declaration of pride, devotion, and sexual desire is kind of amazing as a commercially successful act of feminist reclamation.

I don't see the phrase as a "feminist reclamation" so much as a mixed literary metaphor inserted into a song about waiting to get a ring on that finger. And "Love Story" is not Swift's sole offense: In "You Belong With Me," Swift passively spins elaborate fantasies that the boy of her dreams is dating her, and not his girlfriend. In the song, Swift is "Dreaming bout the day when you'll wake up and find / That what you're lookin' for has been here the whole time." Since Swift refuses to just ask him out or something, her solution is to aggressively strut her passivity in front of his face at every opportunity.

But let's be fair—while Swift's princess persona is a bit dull, Swift herself has been spending her pre-wedding days writing and recording hit crossover records. That's something, Ann Powers argues for the Los Angeles Times:

the authority these fledgling artists claim is a great sign of feminism's ripple effects. Swift might play a princess in many of her songs—in fact, the best parts of "Fearless" meditate on the princess myth and how reality subverts it—but in the studio she's her own boss, writing and producing those fairy tales.

This is the Sarah Palin theory of feminism. If she's a woman, and she does stuff, it's feminist—even if that stuff is writing songs about waiting around for boys do stuff to you. These women don't deserve our ire, but they don't deserve a cookie, either. Swift should be celebrated as a promising entertainer who writes catchy tunes I like to listen to on the radio. Feminist? Not so much.

—

Exhibit B: The cautionary tale.

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If "Anna", the central character in the upcoming rom-com Leap Year, is a "princess," it is in the urban dictionary sense of the word: She is a beautiful, well-heeled control freak with a serious thirst for a solitaire diamond. Anna wants to propose to her boyfriend, but she can't, because girls can't propose to boys. So our determined young heroine finds a patience loop-hole: Propose to her boyfriend on a day that only comes around once every four years, because it is socially acceptable to do so, in Ireland, on that day alone (?). Anna hops on a plane to secure the man of her dreams on her own terms.

But ho ho, no, not so fast, independent woman. You've still got to wait—for your plane to get re-routed, your car to get blocked by a sea of cows, your ass to fall down a muddy hill, and a charming and handsome Irishman to accompany you on your hilarious misadventures. In fact, our heroine has to wait juuuuust long enough for her boyfriend to realize that he, in fact, wants to propose to her—and for the charming and handsome Irishman to begin to aggressively court her also.

Moral of the story: There's nothing more irresistible than a woman who desperately needs to get married as soon as possible . . . as long as she doesn't end up doing the proposing. That would be pathetic.

—

Exhibit C: Team Bella

Bella Swan, the heroine of the Twilight series, gets a lot of flack for being a passive lump of femininity with no defining characteristics besides her tasty blood. (Rosenberg has penned an exquisitely written anti-Bella screed). By series end, that blood will catapult her into vampire royalty, making her a—you guessed it!—princess. But in New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight series, Bella actually takes on a ton of pretty sweet hobbies.

She fixes up old motorcycles! She jumps off cliffs! She goes on joyrides with dumpy bikers! She sees movies with her friends! She uses e-mail! Okay—so our expectations for Bella's extracurricular activities are pretty low. She actually spends the better part of New Moon staring out of a window, watching the seasons change as she "endures without complaint something which is disagreeable"—bad vampire break-up. But the motorcycle thing is pretty rad, right? Too bad she only does the more interesting stuff to prove how vulnerable and suicidal she is in an attempt to coerce her ex-boyfriend to come back and save her from herself.

Bella's empowerment of desperation presents the most difficult form of patience to re-cast as a new feminism. But let's give it a try—if we can't give up the wedding shit, and we can't give up the princess shit, and we can't give up the patience shit, then we have got to find some way to justify this to ourselves. Sady Doyle, in a brilliant turn, points out that Bella is passive in the way that men in porn are: They're faceless, save for one sizable talent (tasty blood = big penis), and somehow they've got tons of perky, tanned blondes servicing them for no apparent reason. This is exactly what happens to Bella—she does nothing, she is nothing, and hot guys fight over her. (Nevermind that one other thing Bella doesn't do: Sex before marriage). No, it's not feminist. But at least women aren't alone in this peculiar set-up. Plus, it helps religious ladies get off, apparently, so proceeds go toward a good cause.

—

Exhibit D: Feminist v. Princess

Last year, the Washington Post published Rachel Beckman's "One Ring Circus," a story about the years Beckman spent waiting, wishing, agonizing and flat-out fantasizing that her boyfriend Eli would propose to her. Beckman is more attached to the romantic relationship milestones than most—she began imagining Eli's proposal after their first kiss. A few years down the road, she had formed an "Engagement Watch Team" among her coworkers to chart Eli's every move. The obsession was not all white taffeta and seating arrangements; the anticipation of the proposal haunted her. One Valentine's Day, Beckman "carefully checked every dish of food for a diamond ring so that I didn't accidentally swallow it and become one of those proposals-gone-bad stories in the bridal magazines." When Beckman, then in her early 2o's, realized Eli wasn't popping the question that moment, she wept.

Unsurprisingly, the diamond fever left Beckman with some personal conflicts:

I felt like engagement was the one off-limits topic. I didn't want to pressure him or spoil the big, elaborate surprise proposal (that he hadn't even started planning). I was caught in a Catch-22. I could be hands-off and leave it all to him (feminist Rachel says no), or I could be hands-on and get what I want (princess Rachel says no).

I don't doubt that Beckman has been largely influenced by the feminist movement. But the distinction between the "princess" who waits patiently for her boyfriend to propose to her and the "feminist" who actively coerces her boyfriend into proposing sets up a bit of a false dichotomy. The main difference appears to be that the princess waits around for her prince to ride up on his horse, while the feminist pressures her boyfriend to man up and play his assigned role.

A desire to get married is not necessarily an anti-feminist one. The problem is when the decision to wed is left exclusively to the man, leaving the woman to waste years of emotional energy as she waits patiently for him to do so.  The whole point of the milestone is to set up a relationship based on feminine patience and masculine decision-making. Beckman's "feminist" solution is to micromanage the process—to talk openly about her desire to get married, open up negotiations as to the time frame, and instruct Eli on the perfect ring. In doing so, Beckman converts her private agony into proactive patience, but she can't go so far as to pop the question herself—in order to fulfill her lifelong engagement fantasy, she must submit to Eli's better judgment.

Beckman may see this subversive engagement planning as a feminist development, but really, women have always coped with a lack of institutional power by working behind the scenes. I appreciate Beckman's essay, because it's good to remember that achieving patience takes more than switching on your feminine tractor beams and waiting for your prince to come. Getting what you want while seemingly doing nothing is work. Even in 1964, Burt Bacharach knew that just waiting around and being a woman wasn't going to cut it. You have to strut your patience. You have to work your waiting.

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"Wishin' and Hopin,'" a ditty made popular by Dusty Springfield, instructed women to stop their traditional wishin', hopin', thinkin', prayin', plannin', and dreamin', and instead, get off their asses and do stuff: like "the things he likes to do" and wearing "your hair just for him." As the song demonstrates, aggressively pursuing what you want isn't always an act of female empowerment.

Photo via George Eastman House

I recently scolded Chris Brown for employing the phrase on the Wendy Williams Show, citing four criteria (a) "I Love Women" essentializes an entire gender; (b) it really means "I love having sex with women"; (c) it is generally employed as a thin cover for a blatant sexist phase; or, worse: (d) it is assumed to be a get-0ut-of-jail-free card for past misogynistic behavior.

But Weingarten insists that he's not using "I love women" in the Chris Brown sense of the phrase:

Washington, D.C.: As a regular user of the phrase "I love women" right here in this very chat, what say you about this?

Gene Weingarten: This is interesting, and a comeuppance for me. Except when I say "I love women" I do not mean "I love to have sex with women." I mean something less crude, but no less objectionable, I suppose. I am saying that I find a combination of certain traits—compassion, empathy, the ability to wield sexual power with sophistication and adroitness and mercy, the sometimes comical pursuit of decency and cleanliness, a distaste for the vulgar and common, an instinctive kindness, and instinctive appreciation of tastefulness and decorum, a charming embarrassment over coarse bodily functions, and several other attributes—to be adorable and enviable and worthy and beyond the understanding of many men. In this sense, I am, in fact, both generalizing (all women are not alike) and diminutizing (I find these things, God help me, "cute"). I am guilty of this and apologize.

Gene Weingarten: Here's how much I respect women: If I were a gynecologist, I would administer ma'am-ograms.

So, Weingarten isn't using "I love women" in a (b) "sex!" or (d) "excuse for hitting his girlfriend" way, but he is using "I love women" in an (a) "generalizing" and (c) "deminutizing" way. Basically, he's batting .500 on "I love women." But hey, at least he's honest about it.

Ever wondered exactly what you have to do with your penis to be charged with indecent exposure in Virginia? Need to know what sort of aperture you have to be looking through in order to be convicted of peeping? The Washington Post is here to help!

Last week, 29-year-old Eric Williamson was charged with indecent exposure after "a woman and her 7-year-old son walked by his Springfield house and saw him, through the window, naked." The woman claims she was walking her son to school one morning when Williamson presented his naked body to her not once, but twice—first "standing nude in the doorway, " and then "through a large window that appeared to have no drapes." She called the police.

Williamson concedes that he was hanging out naked in his house, but denies that he intentionally exposed himself to the woman and the boy. The police response, Williams says, was extreme. "All of a sudden, I get woken up by police officers, and this guy has a Taser gun in my face," he said. "I'm freaking out. Is this a movie? A horrible dream?" He called Fox News.

The incident has courted international attention to Virginia's indecent exposure and peeping laws. In a Washington Post online chat yesterday, Fairfax attorney Atchuthan Sriskandarajah administered a quick legal lesson on the peculiarities of Virginia's sex statutes. Can a person indecently expose themselves from the privacy of their own home? By the same token, can passersby who happen to spy a naked person through the window be charged with peeping?

According to Sriskandarajah, indecent exposure must require three elements:

* Exposure. Displaying your private parts (breast-feeding doesn't count).

* Intent. The question that plagued the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson Superbowl flap.

* Obscenity. The nudity must be accompanied by an obscene act to be considered "indecent."

In Virginia, a person can be convicted of indecent exposure even if the exposure occurred inside their own home—as long as they got naked, deliberately revealed that nudity to passersby, and, like, grabbed their genitals or something.

Virginia's "peeping" statute also contains three major elements:

* Secrecy. No matter where you're peeping, the peep must be "secret or furtive"—the naked person can't be aware you're looking at him or her.

* Residential peeping. In order to prove you've peeped into someone's home, you gotta peep through something. The statute lists windows, doors, apertures, holes, cracks, or any "other similar opening through which a person can see" as acceptable peepholes.

* Commercial peeping. If the peeping is occurring outside a residence—like in a "restroom, dressing room, locker room, hotel room, motel room, tanning bed, tanning booth, [or] bedroom"—you still gotta peep through cracks and holes. But this time, you gotta be seeing something naked. According to the statute, that includes "the purpose of viewing any nonconsenting person who is totally nude, clad in undergarments, or in a state of undress exposing the genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast."

Photo by rick, Creative Commons License.

In an editorial slide-show titled Lindsay Lohan: A Metamorphosis, the Washington Post's Liz Kelly revisits the many looks the 23-year-old starlet has cultivates over the years. But this is no style retrospective treatment, a la Madonna's chameleon-like fashion choices or Tyra's wacky wigs. This slide-show is focused exclusively on each stage of Lohan's career, and whether or not she looked ugly in it!

Let's see how Kelly rates Lohan's attractiveness over the past five years:

2004: "Channeling a bit of Britney Spears's 'little girl gone bad' mojo."

2005: "Bleach blond"; "rapidly shrinking frame"; "eating disorder"; "possible drug abuse."

2006: "Apparently at a healthier weight"; "curvy, brunette."

2007: "Healthy-ish."

2009: "Bathing suit-clad"; "victim of her own Sevin Nyne brand tanning mist"; "a blond, haggard Lohan."

Lohan is a celebrity, and part of being a celebrity is having your appearance intensely scrutinized by gossip columnists. Still, why is the Washington Post devoting editorial space on its front page that can be reduced to one catty Hollywood insult—Lohan looks "haggard"?

According to the slideshow's introduction, the product was an exercise in edginess. It reads, "Lindsay Lohan has been, dare we say it, looking a bit rough of late. Maybe it's the bleached hair or the fake tan, but it's getting harder to remember that Lohan is only 23." Apparently, publishing a fluffy celebrity slide-show filled with Perez Hilton-ready body-snarking now constitutes a "daring" editorial decision.

Actually, expressing that women look old, unattractive, unhealthy, too fat, too thin, or too blond is pretty much par for the course, as far as media coverage of women's bodies are concerned. The Post's celebrity sensibilities are actually beginning to wear a bit—dare I say it?—old.

Last week, two stories on the Washington Post's gender treatment for a couple of transgender shoplifting suspects (Washington Post Cross-Dressing Shoplifting Story Misfires; Transgender Shoplifting Story's Absurd Corrections) inspired confusion, transphobia, and some helpful commentary!

The story: A couple of transgender women are caught shoplifting, and end up being shot by police after a botched getaway. In a medical examination, the suspects are revealed to have male genitalia. So: The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued a vague clarification that the suspects were still men dressed as women, but “were not in disguise.” Was the Post's treatment insensitive? Incorrect? Or the lone crusader for truth in a PC world?

Carisa Cunningham appreciates the teaching moment:

I don’t think we can just expect mainstream journalists, even those with good intentions, to know what to do, how to look at this, the correct terminology to use, etc,about what to them is unfamiliar territory if we don’t take the responsibility to reach out to them. An event like this is an opportunity for GLAAD, for example, to connect with Mr. Weil about terminology and about transgender issues generally. I accept at face value his explanations and would approach him in the same good faith. The world doesn’t change otherwise.

While TJ wants an apology:

The first thing that I thought about the article was, “That’s nice that you cleared it up.” But then I had this question: was this supposed to be a retraction of some sort? I understand that these two women are criminals, but were they issued some sort of apology? Clearly they considered themselves female based on what Renee Bailey said. And with names like Renee Bailey and Kelly Bright, how in the world would the police or anyone else think that these are men? WTF!

And william thinks that people with "confused sexuality" will naturally confuse others:

While confused sexuality may not be mysterious to those who identify as transgender—it is highly confusing to many others, including police. Give them, and the media a break. I happen to have personally met one of these suspects and can tell you “she” is living as a woman but physically appears to be very, very male. I left the meeting pretty confused myself and would have to consult an expert to properly categorize this person.

Gregory A Butler writes:

Cut out the politically correct bullshit—these were men in dresses. They may have had a mental delusion that they were “women”—but they had penises, and testicles, and Y chromosomes, and that makes them MEN, no matter how many skirts or wigs they put on!

Julia writes:

Thank you for writing this. The distinction between sex and gender is one that far too few people recognize, but you’d hope that major media outlets would at least try to get it right (it doesn’t take much research to see that cross-dressing isn’t the same as being transgendered). If they don’t, they deserve to be called out on it. And the fact that they can get it wrong probably means that the general public doesn’t have a good grasp of the issue either, which makes your detailed explanation all the more important.

Much ado 'bout nothing thinks we should all understand "the news biz" (instead of transgender people):

Shoplifters get caught is not news. Shoplifters get shot IS news. And so, when the police identify the shoplifters as female, and they turn out to have penises, that’s something that “advances the story,” as they say in the news biz. Not a correction, but a new fresh lede for the story. That’s how the news biz works.

The news biz, Amanda. Learn about it. It can help you gain perspective.

Matt C is afraid that these transgender women are suffering from our gender stereotyping:

What defines a female? Is it the type of clothes a person wears? Is it the type of general interests a person has? Or is it even the choice in sexual partners one prefers?

If you answered No (like I do) to the above questions then it would stand to reason that a man could share these same characteristics and still be considered a man.

Why then do some feel the need to ignore fact and incorrectly label either themselves or others with a stereotypical “gender identity” that defines ones sex by the way they dress & behave rather than their biological fact.

I applaud the Washington Post for getting the facts correct on this story and not letting political correctness cloud the truth.

While Gregory A Butler is back to clarify one point: Transgender women must choose between being referred to as women, and getting shot—or being called men, and not getting shot. Makes sense!:

Also, the real issue here is being lost.

These guys (and that’s what they are – GUYS) were Shot For Stealing A Dress.

That’s the REAL issue here – not what pronouns the Washington Post’s crime reporter uses!

I’m sure if you called these men “he” but Didn’t Shoot Them, they would prefer that to being called “she” and being shot over a dress!

This is one of the main reasons why Political Correctness is so destructive!

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

NBC Washington shows what happens when news outlets fail to confirm the correct gender identity of their subjects before publication. The outlet has just posted another story about the two shoplifting suspects who were shot by police near the University of Maryland last Friday. Here's the absurd lede:

Upon closer review, it appears two shoplifting suspects shot by a Prince George's County police officer weren't men, as originally reported, or cross-dressers, as was later reported, but transgender women.

The third time is the charm for NBC, who took four days to get the gender identity of the suspects right. NBC does one better on the Washington Post, at least. The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued the vague and misleading clarification that they were men dressed as women who "were not in disguise."

Apparently, the paper has an aversion to just calling the suspects "transgender women." Interestingly enough, the Post's first iteration—"women"—would have worked just fine. Martin Weil, the Post reporter who wrote the second story on the suspects—the one outing them as "men"—said in an interview that the paper decided to run the story in order to stay competitive with the television news outlets that had reported the suspects' sex as "male."“The police had informed us that the suspects appeared to be men wearing women’s clothing, and we didn’t know too much more about any of the details,” says Weil. “We posted that story on the web so as not to look as if we were totally unaware of the unusual circumstances.”

Weil adds that the original story, which identified the suspects simply as “women,” risked inspiring some gender-related confusion of its own. “When you’re writing about women criminals in the newspaper, it behooves you to be extremely careful, because it alters people’s perceptions of the world,” he says. “When you read about a woman seemingly recklessly dragging a police officer, you get an unusual impression of the range of behaviors that are possible. And maybe it’s an accurate impression. But if it’s not an accurate one, I wanted to correct that in any way that was possible. So I decided, in a burst of enthusiasm, to post that item on the Web early Sunday morning.”

Beyond Weil's enthusiasm for accuracy, the fact remains that “cross-dressing” shoplifters make for more sensational crime suspects than even women do. While women aren't generally seen as criminals, transgender women are often cast in the public eye as fakers, predators, and criminals against humanity—shoplifters or not. Weil says he never meant to capitalize upon the “man in a dress” punchline. “The last intention I had was the demonization of anyone, of any gender, or transgender either,” he says. “I just never thought at the time that they could be transgender. I assumed they must be people in disguise, or people who happen to prefer that mode of dress.”

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

"Last week, I was over at a friend's house, and he showed me a picture on Facebook of a girl I used to" date, Thomas said.

Woah! Isn't it interesting how expertly Shapira snipped that quote juuuust before Thomas was about to describe, in his own words, what he "used to" do with that girl on Facebook?

Sure, Thomas didn't necessarily employ an R-rated term for his former fling. He could have thrown out a euphemism for dating that didn't really translate in copy: "a girl I used to hang out with"; "a girl I used to see"; "a girl I used to know." Maybe Shapira was simply correcting for Thomas' loquaciousness: "a girl I used to kinda, like, take out or whatever, sometimes." Perhaps Shapira and Thomas are so close, they just finish one another's sentences!

But when Shapira steps in to insert a Post-approved relationship term in an otherwise full quote, it sure makes it look like Thomas had filled in the blank with "a girl I used to bone," "a girl I used to bang," or "a girl I used to fuck." If Thomas' terminology hadn't raised a red flag, why bother butchering the quote right in the middle of the verb?

I have an e-mail out to Shapira asking whether Thomas' description of his relationship was too hot for the Post's standards of decency. I'm trying to hunt down Thomas, but dude's not on Facebook, so if you're one of those friends who acts as his personal Internet secretary, let him know I'd like a word. Preferably a naughty one!

I was really impressed that the Post chose to ask its seven resident football bloggers this question: Should football cheerleading squads be disbanded because they are a misogynist tradition? But then the bloggers were all like: "Nope!"

First, Sarah Schorno is like, STFU you guys cheerleaders are pretty: "You can take the 'it's degrading to women' and 'it's inappropriate for children' arguments and shove it."

And then Dan Levy is all, seriously? "I honestly can't believe we are having this conversation," he writes. (Me neither!) "And before people get all 'oh my gosh you're such a misogynist' on me, let me be perfectly clear on one thing. . . you're over-reacting."

And then Brandon Benson goes, you can't get rid of cheerleaders, because porn: "I admit that I always watch the gratuitous shot of a cheerleader as the network comes back from a commercial break. I admit to lingering over the cheerleader pictures posted on many NFL websites, and watching glimpses of various cheerleader tryouts on the NFL Network."

And then Adam Tracey is all, DUH it can't be misogynistic because it's for men not women: "Yes women and kids watch football, but let's face it; football's main demographic is guys. We like football, we like beer and we like cheerleaders."

And theeeeen, Dawn Knight goes, "I'm sure there are people out there who would want me to bring up the whole women- shouldn't-be-objectified argument," but then she TOTALLY DOESN'T BRING THAT UP, and instead says that a lot of cheerleaders are really nice ladies, and she's "glad times have changed enough to look beyond the short skirts" . . . that we still make the cheerleaders wear. (Is your brain exploding? Mine is too!)

So then finally, Dan Parker is like, okay it's misogynistic, but I'm going to put "misogynistic" in quotes because it's not really: "the league could do well to get rid of cheerleaders in an effort to perhaps make the games seem less 'misogynistic' toward female viewers. "

Parker's opinion is poorly received:

Well, it's been fun, Washington Post's The League! Thanks for having this really productive chat about misogyny! Next time, homophobia?

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, one person was killed and another critically injured in a daytime stabbing outside 209 Q St. NW. In the hours following the homicide, police and reporters gathered witness testimony, formed a description of the suspect, and chased likely motives. This time, cops and journalists were also forced to devote resources to another developing story: the gender of the victims.

Within three hours of the incident, three local news sources had independently verified the victims’ gender identity with police. They all got it wrong.

Fox 5 news reporter Roby Chavez gave this report at 3:59 p.m., about an hour and a half after the stabbings occurred. “D.C. Police sources tell Fox  5 officers found two transgender male victims in front of the building when they arrived,” Chavez reported.

At 4:36 p.m., the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan filed his item on the stabbing, also published in the next day’s paper. “Police said the victims, whom they described as ‘transgender males,’ were stabbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Q Street NW.”

WUSA9’s Bill Starks weighed in at 5:23 p.m.: “Officers…arrived and found two transgender males in front of the building at 209 Q Street, both suffering from stab wounds.”

The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro was the first to nail down the correct gender identity of the homicide victim, who has since been identified under her legal name, Joshua Mack, as well as her chosen name, Tyli’a. At 7:06 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred, Chibbaro wrote, “One transgender woman was stabbed to death Wednesday and another was in stable condition with stab wounds from an unknown assailant.”

But even after Mack’s correct gender identity was established, the struggle continued. In “D.C. Transgender Community Outraged After Fatal Stabbing”—filed more than 24 hours after the incident occurred—ABC 7 reporter Sam Ford announced: “One transgender is dead, another is in critical condition.”

Mack was not a “transgender male,” a “transgender man,” or a "transgender.” Mack was a male-to-female transgender woman who clearly appeared to be female. On the reward poster for her homicide, she’s shown wearing eye shadow, shaped eyebrows, and two long braids. “Of course, when the one young lady was murdered and the other was hospitalized, we were quite upset [with the media coverage] because they aren’t transgender men—they are transgender women,” says Brian Watson, the director of Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted both victims as clients. “I know both of the young ladies that were attacked, and they lived their lives as transgender women. They looked like women. For me, there shouldn’t have been any confusion about them being males. If you saw them on the street, you would see they were females.”

Since the victims in this case clearly presented as women, how were they initially identified as “transgender males”?

Chavez, Duggan, and Starks all attributed the “transgender males” identification to “police sources.” Duggan says that the department’s public information office provided him the term. “The police department put it out there, and we went on what they said,” says Duggan. Starks got even more specific, sourcing the terminology to Quintin Peterson, the public information officer on duty when news of the stabbings broke. “‘Transgender males’—those were his exact words,” says Starks. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble or anything, but that’s what was said.”

Peterson denies that the police originated the term. “‘Transgender males’ was never used. Not by me or anyone in this office,” he says. “We cannot be held responsible for the terminology the news media chooses to use. We did not put anything out other than what the correct terminology is.” Acting Lieutenant Brett Parson, the police department’s top liaison to the GLBT community who was on scene shortly following the stabbing, similarly defers the misidentification to media reports. “It’s the media that seems fixated on their gender identity. That issue did not come from the chief of police,” says Parson. “We’ve had to correct the media on countless occasions because they have been reporting, insensitively, terms that are not used in the community.”

Wherever the term “transgender males” originated, no one really wanted to touch it. Starks says he never asked Peterson for clarification on what the term “transgender males” actually meant. “I didn’t ask him to go beyond that,” he says. “I assumed that it was referring to a person who may be in the process of either a sex change or someone who is dressing in the clothing of another gender.” When asked if “male” refers to the victim’s biological sex or gender identity, Starks was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he says. Duggan says that the Post avoided parsing the term with a deft use of punctuation. “It was a short brief that we wrote really fast, so we decided to use, in quotes, ‘transgender males,’” says Duggan. “I got beat up a lot over that, because I wasn’t educated on [the terminology] at the time, and I was quickly educated on it.”

For cops and journos, employing the correct terminology is more than a matter of respect. Both D.C. police procedure and Associated Press style mandate that transgender individuals be addressed in accordance with their gender expression. According to the AP Stylebook, reporters are to “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” And in 2007, D.C. police adopted one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender policies, which states that when a police officer is unsure of a person’s gender identity, “the member shall inquire how the individual wishes to be addressed (e.g., Sir, Miss, Ms.) and the name by which the individual wishes to be addressed.”

Of course, ascertaining the correct terminology becomes more difficult when the transgender individual is dead. Sometimes, even the victim’s family can’t help identify the preferred gender. ABC 7’s story on the stabbing included a quote from Mack’s brother, Aaron Walker: “I’m just hurting right now. My mom, she’s got 10 boys, and that’s one of my little brothers and for me to see him pass like that,” Walker said of Mack. (ABC 7 also misidentified Walker as “Aaron Hall,” proving that newsroom slip-ups are sometimes based in sloppiness, sometimes in ignorance).

In the event that a victim’s gender identity is unclear, sometimes it helps to do some reporting. Chibbaro took care to verify Mack’s gender identity with “sources both in the community and in law enforcement” before publishing his story, three hours after the first news of the stabbing hit. “This misidentification is not always the fault of police, or the press, or others—this is something that everyone is grappling with,” says Chibbaro. “The first concern that I have, and that I think the Washington Blade has, is whether the information is accurate.”

As the scene of the daylight stabbing grew dark, reporters set about correcting the terminology in their stories, abandoning “transgender males” for “transgender women” and swapping “he” for “she.” But for some members of the transgender community, the damage had already been done. “[S]ix hours and (at least) six edits later, we finally have gender appropriate language in an article based on a double homicide attempt that was clearly motivated by hatred and transphobia,” wrote one commenter on the Fox 5 story. “[I]’m saddened on so many levels."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

We had a rough set of criteria: the tutor had to be an exceptional speaker, had to be good with kids and had to have the kind of schedule where a year-long commitment wasn't going to end the moment the schoolwork picked up.

It turns out there was also another — unspoken — requirement: the tutor ought to be a woman. This was something my wife and I both felt in our gut, even though I knew it made me a huge hypocrite.

Why no male educators in the Reid household? That's another thing that Reid leaves "unspoken" throughout the piece, but the intent is clear: He's afraid a male tutor would molest his daughter.

Reid lays out the issue:

it's one thing to defend my days as an at-home dad and another to put an elementary-school girl alone with a college guy for hours a week. Yes, I know the risk is low, but why accept the risk at all?

Still, out of a sense of open-mindedness, we did interview a male tutor earlier this month. He was a lovely kid, well-spoken and polite, bearing a letter of reference from a parent who trusted him to teach her children — including her elementary-aged girl — to swim. While we haven't talked to everyone on our list of candidates, there is no question that he'd make an excellent tutor. It is entirely possible that we'll hire him, even though the idea still makes me uncomfortable.

I'm curious if any of you have had similar experiences. Is it fear-mongering of the worst sort to prevent this sort of one-on-one interaction, or is it a you-can-never-be-too-careful kind of thing?

Actually, this is worse than fear-mongering. It's discrimination. As "open-minded" as Reid is, as much as he claims to believe that there's "no reason why guys can't do the childrearing thing as well as women," his own fear of sexual predators effectively discriminates against male educators.  Even when Reid gets a real live man in front of him—a "lovely kid, well-spoken and polite"—he just can't shake the idea that no matter how nice a particular man is, no matter how effective a teacher, no matter how appropriate and respectful and recommended he is, he is unfit to do his job because he is a man.

It's heartbreaking for me to see Reid's extreme discomfort with the fact that another parent allowed her young daughter to enter a swimming pool with a male teacher. It's clear that Reid wants to protect his daughter from a parent's worst nightmare, but his fears don't justify discrimination. Reid's particular flavor of prejudice—that against male educators—is wide-spread, of course, to the point that, as one commenter notes, male teachers often "exercise extreme caution and go out of their way to never be alone with students—male or female—because of the possibility of being accused of inappropriate conduct."

Another commenter, who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse himself, makes the point very clearly:

Lets say you were a piano teacher, Spanish tutor or any other kind of teacher that had you teaching one-on-one with a young girl. You OK with not getting female students because you are male? If you think it is fine for others to discriminate against yourself because of your gender then at least you aren't being a hypocrite. Perhaps that gives you some leeway in discriminating against others?

As the father of a young daughter, I hope Reid understands that employment discrimination obviously cuts both ways. Of course, Reid doesn't have to hire just any man to tutor his daughter—the polite swim coach sounds as good an option as any, however. And if he isn't comfortable leaving his daughter alone with a tutor for a couple hours a week—male or female—then all he has to do is stick around during the lesson. Hey, maybe he could pick up a little Spanish along the way.

According to historical Washington Post archives, August is a banner month for crazy bitches. But there's a quick solution for any late-summer onset of the vapors, whether it's from the heat, a cheatin' man, or a too-full pocket book: oh, just throw her in the insane asylum! (The therapeutic pelvic massage comes later).

Diagnosis: It's hot.

Remedy: Straightjacket.

Bitch, please: Mary Smith, "a domestic"—the Post doesn't specify the breed—bites herself "in her frenzy." Police respond by tying her arms to her body and throwing her in jail. Surely, whatever made this stay-at-home Virginia mom housekeeper nearly bite her own arms and hands off will subside once the humidity goes down, right? Make sure to keep her on the insta-asylum list for next August!

—

Diagnosis: Husband-killer.

Remedy: Explain it away as hysterical jealousy.

Bitch, please: Ah, I see that this man was the victiom of his wife's "jealous rage" over allegations of "paying attention" to another woman, and so was slain. Typical. It's almost enough to overlook the part where he jumps out of the car and slams his fist in her face for catching him with his male companion. Hmmm! But even if it was a domestic face-punching and not maaaddddness which prompted the woman to discharge the weapon, one thing's for sure—if she wasn't crazy before, she's crazy now. Case closed.

—

Diagnosis: "Colored"

Remedy: Guess.

Bitch, please: These women were practically asking to be pronounced demented and filed in the "insane department." After all, the three women were suspicious, "like the majority of their race," and we all know that black women are just one herbal tea away from being a lifelong danger to themselves and others.

—

Diagnosis: Bitch has money.

Remedy: Yeah, yeah, commit her.

Bitch, please: Well, well, well. The truth comes out. It's not too hard to illegally confine a fake crazy woman in an insane asylum after all! All she has to do is get drunk—or get too hot, or drink some tea—and it's curtains for her! this woman is lucky enough to have a lawyer—she's crazy because she's rich, remember—who tries to make people give a shit that turn-of-the-century insane asylums were marked by "ill-treatment and cruelty." The "aged colored woman" in our last story probably was not so lucky.

Earlier this month, John Aravosis's praised the Washington Post for an op-ed supporting gay marriage—before quickly criticizing the paper for its incessant use of "homosexual" throughout the piece. In his indictment of the Post, Aravosis raises an interesting point about mainstream media coverage of shifting cultural attitudes. Even as a newspaper's coverage tends towards the progressive—as is the case of the WaPo editorial—its commitment to formal style often keeps the discussion mired in the traditional.

To a seasoned Postie, "homosexual" might seem like a formal—even respectful—choice for your editorial endorsement of same-sex marriage rights. But as Aravosis points out, the usage is swiftly transitioning from "formal" to "archaic"—and is now dipping into "offensive." "Homosexual," to thoroughly modern ears, recalls a time when being gay was stigmatized as a type of psychosis—not the most flattering choice for your equal-rights essay.

In the newspaper business, however, stylistic tradition often lags far behind popular usage. But as reporters and editors strive to maintain style, Aravosis argues, they sometimes sacrifice objectivity. Even in WaPo's gay-positive editorial, the use of "homosexual" aligns the paper with the rhetoric of far-right homophobes, and in opposition to the preferred usage of most gay men and women (that would be a simple "gay").

As blogger Rex Wockner points out, the Washington Post has now proven itself more traditional than the leading authority on newspaper style—the Associate Press Stylebook. The Stylebook I've got lying around the office, published in 2000, defines "gay" as "acceptable as popular synonym for both male and female homosexuals."

But the reference book has come a long way since 2000 (when, as a side-note, it had to remind journos not to upper-case the L in "lesbian"). According to this (admittedly dubious) resource, the AP Stylebook began to explicitly prefer "gay" over "homosexual" in its 2006 edition. "Homosexual" remains the preferred term "in clinical contexts or references to sexual activity"—but not in general reference to specific humans.

As long as the Post editorial board is publishing endorsements of same-sex marriage, it might be time for the paper to endorse "gay," as well.

Why pay journalists to write about Sarah Palin when Sarah Palin is perfectly willing to pay people to write as if they were Sarah Palin? It's almost too easy.

The Washington Post's breakout Weddings section, "OnLove," has debuted, providing Washingtonians with another outlet for more-of-the-same coverage of the institution. You've got your pair of interlocked golden rings illustrating the header; your bouquet-clutching, white-veiled bride gracing the front page; and your tales of everlasting love sparked in Dewey Beach spicing up the copy.

But WaPo's weddings page is stepping out of the traditional mold in one way: It's soliciting stories and photos of same-sex weddings and commitment ceremonies, as well.

The OnLove "Wedding Story" submission form requests deets from two parties: "Bride" or "Partner #1" and "Groom" or "Partner #2." Later, the form then reverts back to regular old bride-and-groom. And there's no telling how seriously the Post will consider same-sex unions in its romanticized coverage: so far, the Post's wedding page appears exclusively hetero.

Even if OnLove ends up covering enough gay weddings, it will probably end up covering way too many weddings, period. Although I'm not married, I can understand why a couple's wedding is a very important moment in their lives. What I don't understand is why that couple's wedding is even a vaguely interesting moment in my life, however, unless something very horrific—death and destruction—or awesome—jet packs?—went down. If it's just the same old white dresses, flowers, rings, and vows, that's not newsworthy—that's just a wedding. Happens every day.

Wedding news certainly isn't the only fluff filling out the pages of the Washington Post. I realize that the "Arts & Living" section also devotes entire pages to glorifying our pets and critiquing celebrity fashion sense, as well. But while weddings may not be the least fit-to-print, they do manage to inspire the most predictable boilerplate feature coverage known to journalism.

Weddings, even same-sex ones, are about fulfilling tradition, after all—the whole story depends on the dresses, flowers, rings, and vows being there. In that world, even the tiniest breakings-of-tradition qualify as enduring details. We're talking rose-colored wedding dresses and Vegas-themed receptions here, not a jet-pack experiment gone awry.

Wedding coverage may never go away, but I like to think, at least, that the idea of wedding reporting actually equating writing "on love" is beginning to erode. Wedding coverage is all about artifice. At least fashion reporting attacks the subject with a critical eye.

Now that WaPo is preparing to roll out this "Sports page for women," perhaps it's time we consider to what other seemingly gender-neutral activities have been crying out for a clearly feminine alternative all along.

A colleague of mine suggested a game: I name an area of interest relegated to the ladies, and you tell me what normal (or "male") activity it corresponds to. When I say "hair salon"; you say, "gym, for women!" Ready?

1. High School Reunions: _______, for women!

2. Victoria's Secret: _______, for women!

3. Cosmopolitan: _______, for women!

4. Anorexia: _______, for women!

5. Childbearing, cooking, and vacuuming: _______, for women!

Answers are after the jump.

Answer Key:

1. Scrabble

2. Home Depot

3. The Economist

4. Hunger

5. Careers

Yesterday, I hopped on a 90 Metrobus in the hopes of escaping the downpour. Little did I know that the unsuspecting bus I was boarding was actually an anti-abortion vehicle of shame!

The bus was wallpapered, front to back, on both sides, with this "FREE Abortion Alternatives" Ad, pictured. The ad, for a local crisis pregnancy center, offers free pregnancy tests, counseling, and "services" to pregnant women at four D.C.-area locations. Also on the menu: A good shaming! The woman's numb, downturned face says it all: "You're lost. You're confused. You're thinking about killing a tiny human. We can help."

Go ahead, try to look away: You'll still have to look at another identical forlorn future abortionist!

Blogger Kat of "This is Everything" boarded a shame bus last month (she also snapped the photo). "Ick," she wrote. "[I] pondered whether it would even be worth it to get off the bus (I decided against it since I had already paid the fare.. they have my money so no big deal whether I'm on the bus for six more blocks or not)."

Crisis Pregnancy Centers have a well-documented history of preying on the vulnerable, misrepresenting their legitimacy (what are these "services"?), and passing anti-abortion rhetoric as medical advice. In other words, not exactly what the women of D.C. need.

I know Metro likes to go all-out with its advertisements. And hey, I don't like being bombarded with Obama-themed Pepsi ads either. But the all-or-nothing approach can be a good thing—last January, it helped underpaid Washington Post post-production workers gain traction in their WashingtonPostUnfair.com campaign. And I've spied many Metro ads in the past encouraging D.C. citizens to get tested and treatment for HIV.

But when ad bombardments are targeted specifically on a captive audience of economically vulnerable women, they can be outright threatening. Kat writes: "I totally understand how crucial advertisements are as a form of revenue and financial support for WMATA . . . [but] ultimately I feel it is irresponsible of Metro to run ads for a company, foundation, or organization that deliberately jeopardizes women's health through misinformation and lacks respect for their autonomy."

Until the ads are replaced, Kat plans to voice her disapproval of the ad to WMATA. While I'm not sure this "Metro Customer Comment Form" will get us anywhere, you can give it a try here.

Photo via This is Everything.

On the U Street Listserv this morning, Washington Post Staff Writer Theola Labbé-DeBose solicits "ex wives and new wives who get along":

Hi, for a potential Mother's Day feature I'm looking for local Ex-wives and New wives who get along! The women should be able to talk freely about what it took to get their relationship on a positive note. If you or someone you know fits this bill, and they live in DC-MD-VA please reply to me at labbet@washpost.com.

Thanks,
Theola

Since the situation warrants an exclamation point, I'm betting this holiday-themed piece will have a good layer of bitchy female rivalry beneath its grinning facade. But wouldn't a real Mother's Day present from WaPo be a piece on chummy ex- and new husbands? Certainly there are just as many men in this situation as there are women. My suspicion is that WaPo wouldn't find the stories of male rivalry sufficiently catty to warrant a piece. Or maybe WaPo's just waiting until next month to roll that story out for Father's Day?

Photo by Cosmic Kitty

That's what Ruth Marcus claims in today's Washington Post, quoting Sarah Palin's remarks from a—what else—a pro-life fundraiser. At the dinner, Palin discussed her "choice" to have a child with Down syndrome  at the age of 44—a choice that, as Marcus points out, Palin wants to deny other women. Marcus is miffed that right-to-lifers like Palin routinely justify their anti-choice positions by describing their own "correct" "decisions" to have children. This isn't the fist time Palin has used choice to explain why women shouldn't chose—who could forget Palin's election-season classic, "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby"?

Palin's pro-"choice" comments—where she describes twice considering abortion before deciding to carry her pregnancy to term—after the jump.

"I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first, at an oil and gas conference. While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, wow, I knew, nobody knows me here, nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy, could be easy to think, maybe, of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know.

"Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities. Oh, dear God, I knew, I had instantly an understanding for that fleeting moment why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances. Just make it all go away and get some normalcy back in life. Just take care of it. Because at the time only my doctor knew the results, Todd didn't even know. No one would know. But I would know. First, I thought how in the world could we manage a change of this magnitude. I was a very busy governor with four busy kids and a husband with a job hundreds of miles away up on the North Slope oil fields. And, oh, the criticism that I knew was coming. Plus, I was old . . .

"So we went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a woman's, a girl's temptation to maybe try to make it all go away if she has been influenced by society to believe that she's not strong enough or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process."

Photo by √oхέƒx™

I'm tempted to sympathize with Will here: Some weeks, you're just really hard up for a column. In this case, however, Will's misuse of his cushy WaPo spot is too egregious not to mention. Will spends half his jeans essay rehashing Akst's jeans essay, chortling along as he relives Ackst's every turn. Will co-opts Akst's argument that the blue jean, once decidedly working-class, has now become an expensive, obnoxious, and hypocritical mark of the American elite, who take pains to "slum it" in their unwashable designer jeans. Will then rehashes Akst's SUV-to-the-Whole Foods joke, his McMansions joke, and his Steve Jobs joke.

Akst's sartorial commentary, though as curmudgeonly as Will's, works because Aksts sticks to elite subjects for his satirical ribbing. Now, more than ever, rich people who act extravagantly and decadently poor are ripe for criticism, even by fellow elites. When Akst writes, "Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise," he's making a social commentary—when even the richest men in the world are begging for government handouts, it's important to remember that the rich are well-versed in acting like the poor when it suits their expensive tastes.

But when Will finally forges ahead with his own ideas as to why denim is so terrible, he ditches Akst's class argument. From there, things get much, much, worse.

It's not just the rich who wear denim who deserve Will's scorn—no, Will hates poor people who wear denim, too. When he goes on to call jeans the "infantile uniform of a nation," he sneers at all those pathetic, lower-class Americans who will never rise to the occasion of sporting an anal bow tie and smug grin in promotional photos for their bloviating Republican columns. With jeans-wearers he also tears down grown-ups who watch sitcoms, cartoons, and Indiana Jones movies (two of the three television shows made Time's list of the "Best Television Shows of All Time," which I suppose is only impressive for those heathens who actually watch television), and also anyone who wears anything not sported by Fred Astaire (seriously).

Will isn't pissed at the rich for their hypocritical adaptation of the fashions of the working class. He's pissed at the rich for not looking rich enough, and at the poor for not being rich. Will's essay is a call-to-arms for the rich to flaunt their wealth in tailored suits and real, full-sized mansions.

The only worthwhile flourish in Will's condescension-layered WSJ expectoration is the postscript:

(A confession: The author owns one pair of jeans. Wore them once. Had to. Such was the dress code for former senator Jack Danforth's 70th birthday party, where Jerry Jeff Walker sang his classic "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." Music for a jeans-wearing crowd.)

Now this—beyond being a thinly-veiled, name-dropping kiss on the ass to Jack Danforth—is interesting. If only Will had devoted his essay to this one incident, the near 1,000 comments on the Washington Post Wen site wouldn't all be calling for Will's resignation. Please, George: Tell us how the denim bristled unnaturally against your leg hairs in the Saks fitting room! Describe how you carefully belted the pair over a crisp Oxford shirt! Regale us with details of that infamous night, when George F. Will, swathed in Mom Jeans, rocked self-consciously to the backwoods music of redneck country, one hand cradling a boutique beer, the other uncomfortably pawing uncomforably at his bow tie. Now that's a column.

The Washington Post's editorial board published a piece today arguing that "Pope Benedict XVI Is Wrong on Condoms." An understatement, sure, but I was still glad to see our newspaper of record take God's gift to Africa down a notch. Until I got, oh, four sentences in:

In a perfect world, people would abstain from having sex until they were married or would be monogamous in committed relationships.

Now, at long last, we know what a perfect world would look like!

Nobody would have sex until they were married, except for the gays, who would never have sex ever (except while in Massachusetts and Connecticut). We would all be virgins until we caved and got married too young so we could have sex finally, only to figure out that we didn't really like our spouses enough to spend all eternity with them (and also that the sex was bad). We wouldn't get divorced, because divorce is also un-perfect. Our children would suffer, because even while married we wouldn't be allowed to use contraception.

Take heart, sinners: Everyone who is currently having premarital sex is doing his or her part to make our world a little less perfect. Those of you who are unmarried but are "monogamous in committed relationships" are less unperfect, as long as that committed relationship is your first and it ends in a marriage which ends in death.

Thanks for showing us the way, Washington Post editorial board, secret agents of the Papacy!

Photo by roblisameehan

IF SHE DID RUN, HE WOULD CRUSH HER, a new poll finds [PDF]. "A new national [Public Policy Polling] poll finds that nominating Palin could be a death wish for the party, with Barack Obama leading Palin 55-35 in a hypothetical contest. The key reason Palin would lose to Obama by so much is that even though she might be the top choice for a certain segment of voters within her party, there's also a number of Republicans who say they would vote for Obama if their party nominated Palin." [via ThunderPig].

ALASKANS STILL LOVE HER: Palin enjoys a high approval rating in her state:

Very positive 40.5
Somewhat positive 20.8 percent
Somewhat negative 12.5 percent
Very negative 20.2 percent
Don't know/Didn't answer 6 percent

Her staff still sucks, though.

WHY IS GRETA V.S. SARAH PALIN'S OFFICIAL JOURNO? Greta Van Susteren has bombarded the populace with interviews with Palins big and small. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza knows why: Her husband, John Coale, is a friend of the governor:

Coale, a well-known Washington lawyer and the husband of Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren, drew national media attention when he endorsed Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid in protest of the way in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he backed in the primary, was treated. Coale, in an interview with the Fix, described himself simply as a “friend” of the Alaska governor but acknowledged that he suggested she start a leadership PAC and helped her navigate through some of the questions surrounding her family that lingered after the campaign. Others familiar with Palin’s political team insist that Coale has far more power than he is letting on—essentially helping to run Sarah PAC. Coale demurred on that front, noting only that he talks to Palin regularly and that she is a “fascinating person” who is “definitely not what the right thinks or the left thinks.”

GRETA ON WHY SHE'S A NEUTRAL PALIN REPORTER:

[youtube:v=8PF17zpUBIM&]

[via ThinkProgress]

PALIN HEADLINE OF THE DAY, from Politico's Ben Smith: "Palin Clashes With Feds on Wolves"

MADONNA is to Hillary Clinton as Britney Spears is to Sarah Palin: “Britney is not Madonna,” writes  Spears tour reviewer Jed Gottlieb. “She just ain’t. Madonna is Hillary Clinton. She’s whip smart and survives, even thrives by adapting. And Lord knows she wants it more than anyone. Britney is Sarah Palin. Baby drama headlines. Podunk back story and a massive industry machine behind her. She’s a manufactured star aimed at the lowest common denominator.”

Photo by Kurisu

* Metro Weekly profiles two laid-off longtime Whitman Walker Clinic employees, Barbara Chinn and Pat Hawkins.

* The Post details Malia and Sasha's first day of school at Sidwell Friends:

Usually the recommencement of classes at a private school don't warrant breaking updates: The girls' motorcade left the Hay-Adams Hotel for Sidwell Friends School. They arrived early! Several hours went by. Then they left!

* Slate's Dear Prudence answers "Is it wrong to keep Viagra use a secret?" (No), and offers up some unsolicited advice as well:

I'm wondering why you feel the need for this boost. If you always require it, that's one thing. But if it's just insurance that you will be able to perform even though you're feeling insecure, that's possibly a signal that you should do less performing and more talking. If you don't need the pill, then leave it in the bottle and see how things go naturally.

* Tiger Beatdown, in a post on Gaza, recalls "September, and the planes, and where you were, and how scared you felt, and how you kept calling people to see who was and was not okay":

I remember being on the phone with an out-of-town friend and saying, "I'm so scared we're going to go to war. I'm so scared that we're going to retaliate, and that people will just keep dying."

"Obviously, we're going to go to war," he said, because in a crisis what you really want to do is prove once and for all that you are smarter than the person you are talking to, "and I can't say I disagree with that. We have to defend ourselves. When I look at the footage... anyone who could do this just isn't human." . . . "Everybody's human," was the only thing I could say at the time.

Photo via trialsanderrors.

The Bush administration today issued a sweeping new regulation that protects a broad range of health-care workers—from doctors to janitors—who refuse to participate in providing services that they believe violate their personal, moral or religious beliefs.

The controversial rule empowers federal health officials to cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, clinic, health plan, doctor's office or other entity if it does not accommodate employees who exercise their "right of conscience."

Hey, I wonder who will make the most inane comment on this inane rule? Will it be President George W. Bush? Family Research Council President Tony Perkins? Does Sarah Palin have anything to say about this?

No, okay, let's settle on Assistant Secretary of Health Joxel Garcia! "Many health-care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice—often in direct opposition to their personal convictions," Garcia said.

Don't you just hate it when the government comes a-knockin' at your federally funded business which has been operating PERFECTLY WELL THANK YOU and says you change like EVERYTHING AROUND just to accommodate the constitutional rights of other people? Next they'll be saying that bus drivers "have" to let black people ride in the front, or that poll workers "have" to let women vote. Thank you President Bush for protecting MY right to use American taxpayer's money to deny those American taxpayers their own rights.

Wait a minute . . . based on this ruling, could a federal employee—say, I don't know, Barack Obama—refuse to grant federal funding to one of these anti-contraception, anti-abortion medical providers based on his "right to conscience"? Something to look into!

[Also of interest: For this week's paper, I wrote a story about how pharmacists are denying birth control based on "conscience"—or, you know, whatever].

* Washington Post columnist Hank Steuver on reporters' practices of asking straight actors about playing gay: "Wasn't it really difficult to kiss another man? Implied: Without throwing up, seeing as you're so obviously straight? What were you thinking as you kissed? Did you rehearse it? What was it liiiiiike?"

* According to a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and
CosmoGirl.com, "One in five teen girls (22%)—and 11% of teen girls ages 13-16 years old—-say they have
electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves." Even more teens are playing voyeur: "One-third (33%) of teen boys and one-quarter (25%) of teen girls say they have had nude/semi-nude images—originally meant to be private—shared with them."

* Larry Craig has lost his appeal but not his appeal, am I right fellas?

* Pink News has the skinny on the first gay band asked to march in an inaugural parade: the Lesbian and Gay Band Association.

* Ladyblog calls for a soap opera bailout: "If Susan Lucci isn't safe, no one is."

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Kelly McEvers, who wrote a great series for Slate about her attempts—and failures—at finding pirates in the Strait of Malacca, chatted online today at the Washington Post about her experience getting the story. She had an interesting comment about the gender politics of reporting from the sea. Who has the advantage in locating swashbucklers—men or women?

Downtown DC: Hi Kelly, Interesting assignment—I love how you capture both the boredom and the rush of being on an assignment like this. Sure, I am curious why the chat is before the final segment of the story, but I guess everyone else is too. Ready for Part 5, I guess.

Sounds to me that based on your experience, a male (western) journalist wouldn't have a chance of meeting these contacts (at least in Malaysia/Indonesia). How scared were you, really, when taken into the hold with all these guys? I am assuming it would have been different if they were in their 20s and not 50s...

Kelly McEvers: I'm not so sure that a male journalist would have had problems. See Peter Gwin's recent piece in National Geographic about the same subject, in the same region. The pirate I eventually met was younger—not in his 50s.

But the gender question is an interesting one: I admit that being a woman makes it easier to my job sometimes. But other times it makes it hard. Especially in Muslim countries.

Arrr—it's, a tie?

Photo by Oakley Originals.

* Tim Dickinson for Rolling Stone on why Prop 8 failed. (Hint: It wasn't Mormon or black voters, but it might have been you).

* The Gay Recluse reports on the shielded statues in Union Station (photo above), indicates that behind the shield are uncircumcised Roman penises, calls it "the biggest scandal in the history of hot gay statues!"

* WaPo says Barry and Hills need to work on their "rapport," but noted this cute press conference tidbit: "Leaving the news conference in Chicago yesterday where he introduced his national security team, President-elect Barack Obama strolled out of the room arm in arm with his choice for secretary of state and onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton." Oooooooh!

* Mark your calendars: Forum on gay marriage in D.C. slated for Dec. 11.

* Barrack buys Michelle First Bling!

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story by Monica Hesse on election night hookups as pursued through Craigslist personals ads. But soft! Was it not mere hours before yesterday that I reported on election night hookups as pursued through Craigslist personal ads?

I smell blog item!

Hesse's name is very similar to mine, which is Hess. But look further, and you will discover several subtle differences between Hesse's piece and my own.

First, Hesse relies on the more romantic end of the Craigslist hook-up spectrum ("Missed Connections"), while mine (Hess's) focuses on the Web site's tawdrier offerings ("Casual Encounters"). This is no accident. Hesse's choice belies her newspaper of record's standards of decency, standards which are not shared by my alternative news-weekly. So while Hesse's piece employs expressions of sexuality suitable for the reader of delicate sensibilities ("Awwww yeah"), my piece instead chooses to call a "clusterfuck" a "clusterfuck." ("Clusterfuck" being a term that Washington Post standards prevent Monica Hesse from printing without repercussion).

But though Hesse's piece adheres to Washington Post standards of decency, it does endeavor to break free of her newspaper's more traditional standards of style. Hesse employs italics in order to convey the thoughts of election night participants ("Never felt that kind of euphoria . . . Out of body . . ."), ALL CAPS and irregular punctuation to express surprise ("They were drinking, chatting, hanging out, when suddenly she spotted . . . CORDUROY JACKET!!"), and italics coupled with repetition in order to build suspense ("For Obama! For Obama!"). My piece, on the other hand, has been vigorously edited to purge it of non-standard formatting, save for several carefully placed sarcastic asides.

In conclusion, people will make any excuse to convince other humans to have sex with them, then speak candidly about it to local newspapers.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

It's day two of the Sexist's Manliest Workplace in D.C. tournament, and things are beginning to heat up. In day one of our contest, the Washington Times positively manhandled Washingtonian Magazine, proving that its storied man-heavy organizational chart can't fall to any old progressive employer. Today, the fight continues in the media bracket as Congressional Quarterly tests its man mettle against the Washington Post. Let the unscientific and, in fact, highly arbitrary games begin!

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY: Congressional Quarterly sure has its share of dudes to look after. As the publication of record for Congressional goings-on, CQ covers two of the Manliest Workplace Tournament's most promising contenders: the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. But when it comes down to its own employment record, is CQ more Ms. than GQ? And when will I begin to run out of puns relating to men? Find out below!

President & Editor-in-Chief Bob Merry (Male, 10 points)
Publisher & Senior Vice President Keith White (Male, 9 points)
Editor & Senior Vice President Michael Riley (Male, 8 points)
Executive Editor, Publications Susan Benkelman (Female, ZERO)
Executive Editor, News Anne Q. Hoy (Female, ZERO)
Executive Editor, Innovation Ken Sands (Male, 5 points)
Circulation Sales Vice President: Jim Gale (Male, 4 points)
Chief Marketing Officer: Greg Hamilton (Male, 3 points)
Chief Financial Officer: Diane Atwell (Female, ZERO)
Chief Information Officer: Larry Tunks (Male, 1 point)

Wah-Wahhhh. Scoring only a 40 out of 55 points on the manly index, CQ weighs in with a barely respectable 72 percent manliness. Around here, we call that a C minus.

—

THE WASHINGTON POST: This one could go either way, folks. When Katharine Weymouth took over publishing duties at the paper earlier this year, she reclaimed a role for women carved out by grandma Katharine Graham in the 1970s. But this 131-year-old broadsheet has its share of Marcuses, Miltons, and Boisfeuillets (dude name!) to go around. Let's go straight to the masthead!

Chairman Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr. (Male, 10 points)
Publisher and CEO Katharine Weymouth (Female, ZERO)
Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli (Male, 8 points)
President and General Manager Stephen P. Hills (Male, 7 points)
Chairman of the Board Donald E. Graham (Male, 6 points)
Vice President At Large Benjamin C. Bradlee (Male, 5 points)
Vice President At Large Leonard Downie, Jr. (Male, 4 points)
Vice President of Operations Michael Clurman (Male, 3 points)
Managing Editor Philip Bennett (Male, 2 points)
Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman (Male, 1 point)

That comes to an impressive 46 out of 55 on the Manly Index, or roughly 84 percent manliness. For one woman, Weymouth has managed to significantly affect the manliness of a paper simply littered with Y chromosomes. For what it's worth, we're willing to bet she was a legacy.

—

GLASS CEILING CRACK WATCH: With three women suiting up at Congressional Quarterly and Weymouth weighing in over at the Post, our current crack count rises to a robust 12. (That's 12 positions filled by females in the 40 positions surveyed so far in the media division)

Naughty Meanspirited Awesome: They didn't stand a chance. In last week's Date Lab, Washington Post's resident sadists set up "Chrissy," a 24-year old recruiter, with "Clay," a 24-year-old farmer. Farmer and "recruiter"—a natural pairing, no?

No. By the time Clay set his eyes on Chrissy, it was clear that no Green Acres sparks would be a-flying. "She looked like a D.C. professional. And she was not fat in any way, but she was heavier than the girls I typically go out with," he told interviewer Kelly DiNardo. Chrissy's lifestyle was also a bit heavy for Clay. "I've been through the night-life thing. I did it in high school and college. Heavily," said Clay, who, in his pre-date questionnaire, claimed to be looking for a woman like "Fergie in Black Eyed Peas," a recovered meth addict.

When asked in a pre-date questionnaire how he is "D.C.," Clay responded that "a farmer with a Beemer is dynamic in all environments." When asked how he's not "D.C.," Clay responded, "I am a farmer." Clay also noted that he was happiest "outside, working hard at my farm."

Chrissy, who is not a farmer, described the remainder of the date. "He graduated with his master's in agriculture this past May. Now he raises cattle. I've never even met a farmer or cattle rancher," Chrissy said, adding, "I said on my Date Lab questionnaire that I wanted a cowboy, but I was doing that tongue-in-cheek." Clay countered, "Women like the idea of a cowboy. A cowboy wears a cowboy hat every day. I'm not cool enough to wear a cowboy hat every day. I'm more of a farmer."

Date Lab notes that "The daters don't plan to see each other again." It does not, however, record the number of inter-office high-fives received by Date Lab's mail opener on the date Clay's application rolled in. Thanks for taking one for the team, Chrissy.

Nice: XX Files' "Hot for Hillary," an essay by self-described "woman of a certain age" Mary Burgan. The title, which makes little sense, Burgan describes her experience working the phone banks during the Clinton campaign—and enduring her husband's Obama support. "I felt a pull of loyalty, for despite my concerns about her lack of spontaneity and the dullness of her stump speech, I believed that she would be the last and most credible woman in my lifetime with a shot at being president," wrote Burgan. "Actually, I was a bit surprised to discover how much that meant to me and how angry I could get at men who didn't see the matter's extreme importance."

Burgan allows herself to inject some humor into that premise, though, making a killer Cash Cab joke and several old folks jabs along the way. In the essay, Burgan displayed a certain social grace that Jezebel's Moe Tkacik found missing from the rheteric of some die-hard Hillary supporters. There was only one point of strangeness in the text, when Burgan says a fellow volunteer at the phone bank told her "There's a special hell for women who don't help women." What, no Palin/Starbucks joke follow up? You're showing your age, Burgan.

But if the prose doesn't convince you, Burgan's mug might:

I love this woman.

* The Washington Post Magazine yesterday detailed the storied law office romance of Michelle and Barack Obama. Even with my hard, unfeeling heart, I managed to read this . . . almost all the way though. Here's the engagement story:

[Michelle] began to pressure Barack to get married . . . Barack put her off, arguing that marriage was a meaningless institution and that the only thing that mattered was how they felt about each other. Michelle, whose parents had been married for some 30 years, wasn't buying it.

Then, one night in 1991, he took her to Gordon, an expensive Chicago restaurant, and she started to press him again. He went into his usual tirade against marriage, a dissertation that went on until they ordered dessert. When it came, the plate had a box on it, and in the box was an engagement ring.

"'That kind of shuts you up, doesn't it?'" Michelle remembers Barack telling her.

Plus this strange tidbit about Michelle's early legal work:

The group went out of its way to give Michelle work suited to her interests. When an opportunity came in to handle the budding public television career of Barney, the purple dinosaur poised to become a phenomenon among American children, Goldstein says he and others felt it had Michelle's name written all over it.

* Sarah Palin reserved her very own place in Hell on Saturday. At a California rally, Palin (poorly) recited a quote from Madeline Albright in an attempt to re-affirm the "feminist" angle of her campaign. The speech began with an endorsement from L.A. National Organization for Women president Shelly Mandel, which I can only imagine is the way Andy Kaufman has chosen to tell us all that he's still alive. But don't worry, Palin didn't get the quote from her extensive research of Clinton-era foreign policy; she got it from Starbucks:

I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.' [Crowd approval] . . . OK, now thank you so much for receiving that well—I didn’t know how that was going to go over . . . And now California, let’s see what a comment that I just made how that is turned into whatever it’ll be turned into tomorrow in the newspaper.

I'm not sure that newspapers can really be blamed for twisting Albright's Starbucks' Palin's words, which barely make sense on the level of the sentence. More confusing than the actual speech, though, is that the crowd first boos Albright, then cheers her words when filtered through the finely calibrated Starbucks-Palin machine.

* Last summer, the New York Observer found New York City's hottest transsexual woman, super fox Jamie Clayton. Now, Logo's got the first Clayton video interview: [via Gawker]. Clayton talks about "blending in" and New York guys' pick-up lines.

* Tina Fey is Palin; Queen Latifah is Gwen Ifill:

Plus, why some are amused, confused, by Fey's success at Palin's faults: "Wow, she really looks like Tina Fey. Tina Fey has been doing a great job parodying her. Boy, I love Tina Fey. Ack, but I don't love Sarah Palin. Nononononononono! Bad mental association. Bad." [via Feministe].

Photo by DanieVDM

* Yesterday's Washington Post date lab, attached Michaeleen plays games with single Steve. "I never did the whole date-lots-of-people thing when I was younger. The man I am seeing is out of town, so he doesn't know about Date Lab," says Michaeleen. "I am going to tell [him]. I do believe in being honest and up front." Two weeks later, Michaeleen's boyfriend was still in the dark about Michaeleen's WaPo-funded dinner date. Until now!

* Once but a blog, now a full-fledged 'zine: The second issue of local fashion/lifestyle magazine panda head is available today.

* Brightest Young Things on last week's All-City Air Guitar Competition at Wonderland: Fenders replaced with cut-off shorts, DIO shirts, and tighty-whities.

* Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds make it official in a Canadian wedding.

* Tina Fey reprises her role as Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live"; Amy Poehler takes on Katie Couric:

Judging local takes on sex and gender.

What a week to launch a new sex and gender blog. Since Sunday, The Washington Post's Style Section has been going balls out on its trad. values coverage with "Wedding Week 2008." Whether you've feasted from the Post's Wedding Week buffet or merely dipped your finger in its room-temperature hollandaise sauce, The Sexist has your guide to what coverage catches the bouquet and what pieces are so homely they might never find a man who could ever love them.

Naughty: Rachel Beckman's "One Ring Circus." This piece is your typical girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl spends several years waiting for boy to ask her to love him until they die, girl converts her workplace into an "Engagement Watch" bitching den until she finally wears boy down enough to propose to her type of story. In other words, a success!

Beckman, a former City Paper writer, spends the piece struggling to align her "feminist" side with her "princess" side. "I was caught in a Catch-22," writes Beckman. "I could be hands-off and leave it all to him (feminist Rachel says no), or I could be hands-on and get what I want (princess Rachel says no)."

Let me make it easy for you, Beckman: You're a pretty, pretty princess.

For the sake of the story, though, let's imagine that, by virtue of picking up Bust Magazine a few times in college, Beckman is, like, a totally liberated woman beneath that frilly exterior. Beckman's idea of compromise between the feminist and the princess is to coerce her boyfriend to propose to her how she wants it, when she wants it, and with the appropriate cut of diamond—but to maintain the artifice that he is running this entire show in order to preserve what she calls the "purity" of the engagement.

Years ago, these sort of behind-the-scenes marriage machinations might have been seen as clever tricks for women to transcend patriarchal control in order to get what they want. But this is Wedding Week 2008, Beckman!

If a "pure" union requires a woman to kill herself in order to make it appear as if her "man" is making all the decisions and that she agrees to every one of them, consider me the piss stain in the freshly fallen snow of modern marriage.

Nice: After that, Caitlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel's "The Anti-Wedding" reads positively radical. Gibson and Manteuffel's piece—their attempt to deliver a "Fuck You" to the marriage industry by planning the nuptials of a wedding-averse alterna-couple—is largely a pleasant romp through the tedious wedding-making machine. Still, I can't help but see this piece as token "Other" coverage in an entire week of features that pander to the wedding industry. Just how Anti-Wedding is this wedding anyway?

Nontraditional:
- wedding occurs not in church but in street
- bride wears red summer dress
- service marred by miserable, miserable rain
- guests brandish signs reading "'Til Debt Do Us Part" and "Money Can't Buy Me Love"
- no rings exchanged
- in place of champagne and cake, beer and pizza consumed

Traditional:
- requires two wedding planners
- union between man and woman
- photo shoot printed in national newspaper
- couple still fucking getting married

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

* On Slate, Dahlia Lithwick serves Joe Biden with some rules on how to fight a girl. Lithwick, a former parliamentary debater (side-note: totally awesome), gives Biden a frank run-down on how not to lose the Veep debate to Governor Palin. Most of the advice is fine—don't leer, don't condescend, don't stoop—until Lithwick slips from the particular Biden/Palin scenario to a generalization about all male/female match-ups.

When Lithwick writes that her "insanely successful college debate friend told me recently that the way he won against women was by always behaving like they were men," the implication is that minus their feminine wiles—the lipstick on their pit bulls—women will lose. After a long explanation of why Biden shouldn't respond to Palin with Palin tactics, Lithwick's kicker—"My best advice to you for dealing with Gov. Palin? Fight like a man. She will."—is both confusing and lame. Who's the man what now?

* The Washington Post marches boldly on with their "Wedding Week" coverage. At 1 p.m. today, join the authors of The Bridal Wave: A Survival Guide to the Everyone-I-Know-Is-Getting-Married Years for a live online chat. Ask Erin Torneo and Valerie Cabrera Krause how people who desperately wish they were married manage to be more tragic than the people who actually publicly declare how they're going to love each other forever in front of everyone they know. Including their parents.

* Wait, coverage of marriage issues that doesn't include pandering to the wedding industry? The Blade tips you off to a panel discussion on marriage rights in California and Massachusetts, tonight at 6:30 at the University of California Washington Center. UCWC is located at 1608 Rhode Island Avenue NW.

* The New Gay chronicles the "hidden history" of the women behind the writings of Victorian author Michael Field.

* Via Wonkette: Michelle dances with Ellen. Possible next First Lady jam: Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music." Last year, Barack got down to Beyonce's "Crazy in Love." Umm, I only watch Ellen when an Obama is on the show, does she make everyone do this?

Photo by NCinDC.